For most of his career nobody knew what L looked like. Police forces around the world received his instructions through a laptop screen showing a single gothic letter, and he solved the cases they couldn't. Then a run of criminals started dying of heart attacks, and L decided this one was worth stepping out from behind the screen.
What emerged was not what anyone expected: a hunched, pale young man in a white shirt and jeans, with no shoes, deep shadows under his eyes and a plate of cake within reach at all times. He's rude, childish about losing and openly manipulative, and he's also the only person who can match Light Yagami move for move. This profile covers who L is, how he works, his part in the story and the people around him. For the whole cast, see the Death Note character guide.
Who is L in Death Note?
L is the detective who takes on the Kira case. When the series begins he's already a legend, described as the world's greatest detective and the last resort of the international police. He picks his cases by interest rather than by fee, and he has spent years hiding his name, face and location, which turns out to be exactly the right habit for a fight against a killer who needs a name and a face.
He's also half of one of the best-known pairings in anime. Death Note is built as a duel: Light tries to learn L's name, L tries to prove Light is Kira, and each has to do it without revealing what he knows. Fans who search for "L from Death Note" are usually looking for this side of him, the strategist, but the story gives him more than that. He's lonely, he's never had a friend, and the person he gets closest to is the one he believes is a mass murderer.
- Raised at Wammy's House, an orphanage for gifted children founded by his handler Watari.
- Has operated for years under three separate detective identities.
- Narrows Kira down to the Kanto region of Japan with his first public move.
- Suspects Light within weeks and never lets the idea go.
- Dies partway through the series, which splits the story into two halves.
Personality
L is strange, and he knows it. He crouches on chairs with his knees up, picks things up between thumb and forefinger as if they might be dirty, eats sugar cubes by the handful and builds towers out of them. He rarely sleeps and doesn't seem to mind. Most of this is played for comedy, but it also tells you something: L has never had to fit in, because nobody has ever seen him.
He's childish in ways that matter to the plot. He hates to lose, and he says so. He's petty, he sulks, and when he and Light finally have a physical fight, he kicks back immediately because, as he points out, he's not going to let a hit go. He's also blunt to the point of cruelty. He tells people he suspects them to their faces and watches how they react.
His morality is looser than the Task Force would like. L is not fighting Kira because killing is wrong in some grand sense. He says plainly that he's taking the case because it's interesting and because he hates losing, and he's willing to use a death-row prisoner as bait, imprison and blindfold a young woman for weeks, and bug a family home. His position is simple: Kira is a murderer, and justice means catching him. He doesn't pretend that makes him a good person.
Under all of this is loneliness. L was raised as a tool for solving problems. When he tells Light that Light is his first friend, it's partly a tactic and partly, the story suggests, true. The best scenes between them work because both of those things are true at once.
Abilities and methods
L has no supernatural power. Everything he does comes from deduction, preparation, money and nerve. His methods fall into a few patterns that the series uses again and again.
Deduction from tiny details
L reasons from what the killings themselves reveal. The timing of deaths tells him Kira keeps a student's schedule. Which criminals die tells him Kira only knows what Japanese news reports. The fact that Kira reacts to a broadcast in one region tells him where Kira lives. He builds a profile out of patterns that everyone else has looked at and missed.
Bait and provocation
His first move is a trap. He puts a convict on television as "Lind L. Tailor", announces him as L, and dares Kira to act. When the man dies on air in a broadcast shown only in the Kanto region, L gets two answers: Kira is in Kanto, and Kira kills without needing to touch his victim. Then he appears on screen himself, as the letter, and tells Kira to try again. It's one of the series' most quoted scenes and sets the tone for the whole duel.
Percentages
L talks about suspicion as a number. He tells the Task Force that the chance of Light being Kira is five percent, then later says it's higher, and he openly adjusts these figures as new evidence comes in. The numbers aren't really mathematics. They're his way of keeping a hunch honest, and of reminding everyone that he hasn't proved anything yet.
Getting close to the suspect
L's boldest method is to stand right next to the person he suspects. He enrols at To-Oh University under the name of a pop idol, introduces himself to Light on the first day, and invites him onto the investigation. Later he chains himself to Light by the wrist. The logic is that if Light is Kira, he can't act while L is watching, and if he is innocent, L loses nothing. It's also a gamble with his own life, since Kira only needs a name.
Resources
L is very wealthy and has Watari to handle the logistics. He builds a whole headquarters for the Kira investigation, hires specialists and calls on the help of governments. It's a reminder that being "the world's greatest detective" is also an institution, not just a mind.
Story arc
The Kira case begins
The ICPO meets to discuss the wave of heart attacks among criminals, and L is brought in. The Lind L. Tailor broadcast locates Kira in Kanto. L sends FBI agents to Japan to watch people connected to the police, and when they all die he knows Kira has access to police information. He has the Yagami home bugged and filmed, watching Light at his desk for days. Light gets past this with a pocket television hidden in a bag of crisps, and L can find nothing wrong, which only makes him more suspicious.
To-Oh University
L and Light both score full marks on the university entrance exam and give the freshman address together. L uses the moment to reveal himself to Light, a move that traps Light: if L dies now, Light, the only person told, becomes the obvious suspect. Their friendship starts here, over a tennis match and coffee, with each of them testing the other in every sentence.
The Second Kira
Videotapes from a second Kira start arriving at a TV station, and this one doesn't need a face and a name in the same way: it mentions Shinigami and seems able to kill from a face alone. L works out that there are two Kiras and gathers enough evidence to detain Misa Amane. Light then asks to be confined too. Both give up their notebooks while in custody and lose their memories, and when they're released, neither shows any sign of being Kira. L keeps his theory anyway.
Chained together and the Yotsuba arc
L handcuffs himself to Light and the two work the case side by side. The Kira killings have moved into the business world, benefiting the Yotsuba Group, and L and Light, a Light who now honestly wants to catch Kira, trace it to Kyosuke Higuchi. When Higuchi is caught, L gets his hands on a Death Note for the first time and sees Ryuk. But the notebook comes with two rules that seem to clear Light and Misa: the user dies if they don't write a name in 13 days, and anyone who destroys the notebook dies. L suspects these are fake and plans to test them.
L's death
L's plan to test the 13-day rule would expose Misa, and Rem, who loves Misa, can see it. Light has built the situation so that the only way for Rem to protect Misa is to kill L. She writes the names of Watari and L. Watari dies first, wiping his data as he goes. L falls from his chair moments later. In the manga, the last thing he sees is Light's face, smiling down at him, and he understands he was right. The anime stages the same scene more quietly, with rain and the bells L said he could hear.
His death comes at roughly the halfway point of the series, which is why many fans divide the story into "before L" and "after L". Our guide to memorable character deaths covers why it hit readers so hard.
After L
Light takes over L's identity and runs the Task Force for years. The real continuation of L's work falls to Near and Mello, his two possible heirs from Wammy's House. When Near finally exposes Light, he says that between them, he and Mello had finally matched L.
Relationships
Light Yagami
Prime suspect · Friend
Light is the reason L comes out of hiding, his only equal and, by L's own account, his first friend. They study together, play tennis, fight, and spend weeks handcuffed to each other, and neither ever fully drops his guard. It's a friendship and a hunt at the same time. Our iconic rivalries guide covers why the pair became the template for so many later rivalries.
Watari
Handler · Guardian
Watari, real name Quillsh Wammy, founded the orphanage that raised L and now acts as his voice, butler and quartermaster. He's the only person L trusts completely, and they die within moments of each other.
Misa Amane
The Second Kira
L is right about Misa from the start and treats her with open disdain, then with something more like pity. Holding her in custody is one of his most ruthless decisions. His final plan would have exposed her, which is what gets him killed.
Soichiro Yagami
Task Force chief
Soichiro respects L and resents him for suspecting his son. L, for his part, trusts Soichiro's honesty completely, and asks him to carry out a staged execution of Light and Misa as a test.
Touta Matsuda
Task Force detective
L treats Matsuda as a liability and says so, but Matsuda's clumsiness accidentally helps the Yotsuba investigation. Their scenes are some of the funniest in the series.
Near and Mello
Successors
Two Wammy's House children trained to take L's place. Neither alone can do what L did, which is the point of the second half. Read more about them on the main Death Note page.
Trivia
- Three detectives in one. L is also secretly behind the identities of two other famous detectives in the story, Eraldo Coil and Deneuve. When someone hires Coil to find L, they're unknowingly hiring L.
- The 40 percent claim. L's explanation for his crouch, that sitting normally would cut his reasoning by around 40 percent, is one of his most quoted lines among fans.
- Sweets only. He eats cake, sweets and sugar cubes, and argues that thinking burns the calories off. It's one of several quirks that helped make him a model for the eccentric-genius type covered in our anime archetypes guide.
- Name reveal. His full name only appears in the official guidebook, released after the manga ended. Within the story, almost nobody learns it.
- Spin-offs. L headlines the prequel novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases and the live-action film L: change the WorLd.
- Voice. Kappei Yamaguchi, L's Japanese voice, is also known for voicing Inuyasha. More crossovers are in our voice actors guide.
- The foot-washing scene. In the anime, shortly before his death, L meets Light on a rainy rooftop and then quietly dries and massages his feet. It doesn't appear in the manga and is often cited as one of the adaptation's best additions; see manga vs anime for more on differences like this.
Why L matters to the story
Without L, Death Note would be a story about a boy who kills people and gets away with it. L is the pressure that makes Light interesting. Every clever thing Light does is a response to L, and the series' best tension comes from two people speaking politely while each knows the other might be about to win.
He also gives the story its moral counterweight, though not a clean one. L doesn't stand for kindness or mercy; he bends the law himself, and he admits he's in it partly for the challenge. What he stands for is the idea that nobody gets to decide alone who dies. That he's flawed, petty and lonely makes him easier to care about, and it's why his death leaves such a hole that the second half of the series needs two successors to fill it.
Frequently asked questions
Who is L in Death Note?
L is an anonymous detective who has solved major cases around the world without showing his face. He takes on the Kira case, identifies Light Yagami as his main suspect early on and spends the first half of the series trying to prove it. He's the hero of that half of the story in all but name.
What is L's real name?
L Lawliet. The series itself never says it; it appears in the official guidebook Death Note 13: How to Read. In the story he goes by L, Ryuzaki, and Hideki Ryuga, the name of a pop idol he borrows at university.
Why does L sit like that?
L says his reasoning ability would drop by about 40 percent if he sat normally. Whether that's true or just his own quirk, the crouch, the bare feet and the thumb at his lip are what make him recognisable at a glance.
How does L die in Death Note?
Rem, the Shinigami protecting Misa, writes L's name and Watari's in her notebook. She does it because Light has arranged things so that L's investigation is about to catch Misa. Killing L to save Misa also kills Rem. See the spoiler section above for the full scene.
Did L know Light was Kira?
He was convinced of it, and he was right, but he never got proof he could act on. Light's plan to give up the notebook and lose his memories meant that for a long stretch L was watching an innocent version of his suspect. L dies a few moments too early to see his suspicion confirmed.
Who replaces L after he dies?
Inside the Task Force, Light himself takes on the role of L. Outside it, L's real successors are Near and Mello, two children raised at Wammy's House, who take up the case in the second half of the story.
Who voices L?
Kappei Yamaguchi voices L in the Japanese anime and Alessandro Juliani in the English dub. In the 2006 live-action films and the spin-off L: change the WorLd, he's played by Kenichi Matsuyama.